"I was just giving an example of the "kind of person" the typically teacher is there"
I was afraid to say something to this effect, but now that you've started it I might as well share this little anecdote ;)
Around the corner of my office is a small school for highly gifted children. They work together with a 'regular' Montessori school here and they follow the same approach - let children find their own interests, stimulate those etc. (disclaimer: I don't know much about Montessori, it's just what I understood from how it works).
Either way, back in 2008 most of a certain social class in Western Europe was infatuated with Obama, how he was going to change world etc. With 'a certain social class' I'm stereotyping, I know - it's relevant for the point; I'm talking about the Prius-driving, Fair Trade shopping salon socialist with cushy government jobs with near-100% job certainty who've never in their lives run a business or done any work that is not in one way or another funded by tax payers. (I'm including university teachers and professors here, they're overrepresented in my neighborhood).
Anyway, around US election time, this school for highly gifted children I mentioned hung out some drawing of the children on their window. One of them said (I'm paraphrasing here, I don't remember the exact wording) 'Obama will clean up the mess that Bush left behind him'. This in a hand writing and on a drawing that showed that the child could not have been much older than 6 or 7.
This is my impression of many of these schools - highly opinionated teachers and parents who live in a upper-middle class cocoon who preach the word of 'free exploration of ideas' and 'self-actualization' but only when it leads to the same type of thinking they themselves adhere to.
I guess it's logical - I'd be abhorred too if my daughter grows up to be a socialist or communist. Everybody wants their children to be at least somewhat like them. Still, indoctrinating children at that age with political propaganda - it gives me a bad feeling.
